The present invention relates to a hand held device used to determine the absolute dimension of a postage stamp of any country of the world.
As is well known by postage stamp collectors, different types of printing were and are commonly used in printing postage stamps. These include rotary press printing and flat plate printing. When stamps are printed by a rotary press printing method, the printed borders on the face of the stamp are spread slightly. When printed by a flat plate printing, the printed borders on the face of the stamp have certain precise dimensions identical to those of the press plate used to print them. Two stamps can appear identical; however, if they were printed by the two above mentioned methods, their borders will not have the same dimensions. These dimensions can be measured to identify which type of printing produced the particular stamp. This separates and particularly identifies two otherwise identical stamps.
There is a certain difficulty in precisely measuring the dimensions of the borders of the stamp.